Krys' Garage

This weekend saw it almost finished... doors hung & panelled, shiplap fitted around the door frame & gable

Ford Fiests 1.8D crankshaft timing

 Not having had anything much to do with the Ford 1.8D engine, & not having the Haynes book until recently, it was not clear how the crankshaft location was achieved when setting up the engine to replace the belts.

After the pump drive belt snapped & the cambelt tensioner destroyed itself, the general feeling among those we spoke to was that the engine was damaged, however it didn't seem as it that was the case as everything was rotating smoothly...

A Mondeo engine came up on ebay cheap & local which we bought with a view to swapping them over, however, the amount of work involved in doing that prompted a re-think!

In order to find out how the crankshaft is set to TDC we removed the sump from the spare engine & turned it on its side... everything then became clear..... There's a flat on the web of the crank of #1 piston, the timing pin is of such a length that when it is screwed into its hole in the block & the crankshaft rotated the flat on the web contats the end of the pin when TDC os reached...

We didnt have the Ford pin & consequently didn't know the length it needed to be (or any facilities to machine on up immediately) so some thinking was called for...

As far as we could tell the Mondeo engine was still timed, so we pinned the camshaft & made a timing pin from a length of M10 studding & three nuts. One nut was drilled out so it acted as a spacer to ensure that the setting was referenced to the machined area around the hole rather than the "as cast" surface of the block. The stud was screwed into the hole until the end touched the flat on the crank web, the two nuts were then locked against eachother & the whole thin removed & inserted into the Fiesta block in the car. As the crank was rotated (clockwise) by putting the car in gear & rotating the wheel we felt it contact the end of the stud...

The pump & camshaft were then lined up & pinned with M6 bolts & the belts & tensioners replaced...

Krys' Garage

A wet day today left us a bit restricted... we only managed to get the other side door made (from the roof of the old shed) & hung & the smaller of the two windows fitted.
We did take the opportunity of clearing up & a trailer load of off-cuts & a few bags of general rubbish went to the recycling centre...

One thing we did notice after loading some wood into the roof space last week was that the trusses we made might not be too over-engineered! We decided to restrict the storage in the roof to light stuff only!

Krys' Garage

Really good progress this weekend... the roof is on, the awning (over the bikes in the lower picture) is done. The cladding is almost finished (using the old shed, which is now dismantled & removed).One of the side doors doors is hung. The interior now has shelves, tools have racks, motorcycle parts are being sorted...
Krys is confused as he can now find things too easily!
Jobs to do: ridge; vehicle doors; side door (x1); cladding to side & front (around vehicle doors); find glass; window cills, guttering, rainwater collection....

Krys' Garage

We took full advantage of the weather this week... and the time off work! to make some serious progress...

The roof trusses we put up last year now re-positioned to accomodate the change in roof cladding material (the original idea was to board & felt the roof, but cost & the need for a guaranteed run of good weather to get it all done in one hit meant we had to re-think... after much searching & thinking, the winner turrned out to be corrugated iron from a local salvage yard... Site Salvage, in Sandwich)

The corrugated iron had to be cut to length with an angle grinder...

....& fixed with galvanised spring head nails

Almost finished.... we decided to take advantage of the fact that five sheets were 10ft long and make an awning off the side of the building at one end...





Krys' Garage

Things moved on a bit quicker this weekend, thanks mainly to £24 worth of wood for the roof trusses. Saturday afternoon saw us making up the remaining six trusses on top of the original one which we'd kept aside as a pattern. As they were made up, we lifted them into position. Once they were all in place, we worked out the spacing (33" centres) & cut the "rafters" to length, 60 in all are required... after a bit of hunting around we'eve almost got enough!
Sunday saw these cut to length & screwed in position, starting at the door end. Due to a change in roofing material, (we are now planning to use corrugated iron)  we will require fewer roof trusses, which will mean we will have to re-position the four we installed last year...
Sunday afternoon we were visited by a local phesant!

Krys' Garage

The end is now slowly taking shape & becoming more weatherproof, this afternoon we fitted some cladding above the windows, as well as the window cill. It was a nice aftertnoon, but the boards kept splitting!

Krys' Garage

Limited progress this afternoon, but at least we managed to do something today, the first time for several weeks... You'll have to look closely, but the cladding either side of the windows was the main achievemnet of the afternoon!
The tractor now runs, but has a hole in the float!

The Peugeot 106 saga continues

This is the modified bracket before re-fitting

The injector pump with the cover removed (eventually!) the shut-off valve is the silver thing

This is the original set-up the shut-off valve is just below the blue connector (under the steel cover)

After two hours spent chiseling, hacksawing, grinding & punching we eventually managed to remove the cover from the fuel shut-off valve. I unscrewed the valve & removed the plunger to stop it working. The valve body was replaced, along with a heavily modified security cover (this forms the lower bracket as well as the throttle cable mount so could'nt be junked completely). Injector pipes & cables then went back on... checked fuel flow to pump, cracked open #1 inj pipe, cranked engine...

Nothing...

tried a tow start.... still nothing.... gave up

The life & times of a Peugeot 106 1.5D

There are two of these... one currently wont start, I suspect the fuel shut-off solenoid valve on the injector pump. Normally I wouldn't expect this to be too difficult to eliminate/rectify? in the case of this car though, the cut-off valve is covered by a "security" cover of hardened steel secured by shear-head bolts... what were they thinking?
Tomorrows first job will be to get the three bolts out & remove the cover, then test the solenoid valve...
some info here:
http://www.106owners.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?107113-1-5-D-immobiliser-removal

the other one needs its n/s drive shaft replacing...

Krys' Garage

Another on-going project is a garage/workshop at the bottom of my son's garden. They were lucky in that the previous owner had laid a concrete slab which was just asking for something to be built on it! For ease & speed of construction we opted for a timber frame prefabricated in sections & errected on a dwarf wall three courses high.

There was another criteria it had to meet... the cost had to be as close to zero as humanly possible!

Bricks & glass (frecycle), sand/cement (damaged bags from DIY stores), studs & plates (either factory waste or recovered & comb-joined, 50p/m) cladding f/edge boards (recycled from pallets & existing shed) roof material TBA... corrugated iron?

This morning we made the most of the wearther & started fixing the cladding on the long side... got half way up...

Emma's dresser part 2

Back panels & top panel fitted now. Shelves fitted to base unit...

Emma's dresser

A friend needed some storage in her new flat....

The lower part will have removeable boxes in each of the "pidgeon holes"... but thats for another day...

The Dover Project

Much of today was spent researching the potential house building project in Dover. The guy at the Building Control desk was really helpful & answered most of my (what must have seemed to him, stupid) questions as well as alerting me to other factors which I didn't even know about! I've just got to do the sums... oh & decide if I want to go ahead!!